Author: Curt Doolittle

ANGLO VS CONTINENTAL THOUGHT: TRADERS VS FARMERS

(cross posted for archiving)

Continental thought is heavily loaded with moral assumptions necessary for a diverse set of polities to cooperate on a shared land mass – and the philosophy is loaded at the metaphysical level.

Anglo thought is predicated on individual sovereignty and the Smithian moral proposition that voluntary exchange PRODUCES moral behavior independently of any intentional, abstract or metaphysically invisible moral commitment. This is a rule based system independent of moral sentiments. Because traders do not share moral sentiments with their customers. They reduce morality to incentives and the satisfaction of them.

The continentals desperately try to preserve moral authority as group identity. Anglo thought is the metaphysics of an extended family of island traders. Just as the French philosophers have always criticized Anglos for not being part of Europe because they are traders and craftsmen not farmers.

Obverse: Trade=Navy=England = Athens = Analytic.

Reverse: Farming=Army=Germany = Sparta = Continental.

Karl Popper frustrates me because while he is often making statements about science in the anglo analytical and empirical sense, he is also retaining the continental religio-moral argumentative framework and the silly metaphysical nonsense prevalent on the continent that desperately attempts to retain commonality of moral experience, rather than relying upon action independent of experience to produce moral outcomes regardless of moral sentiment.

So we can look at this spectrum with something like Smith on one end of the spectrum, Popper in the middle bridging the traditions, and say, Heidegger on the extreme european end, really trying to recreate christianity in the same manner as Kant.

The continental idea in both napoleonic law, and in continental philosophy, suggests that we must have sentimental moral consensus prior to action. The anglo idea both in the common law and anglo philosophy, is that if we have simple rules, we will produce moral outcomes, regardless of our abstract moral commitments…

So simple really.

(So now my criticism of Crusoe ethics is complete.)